Jobless Claims, Housing Starts Improve. Pre-Markets Still Down

Thursday, March 12th, 2026

After a mixed trading day Wednesday, which saw the Nasdaq up for the second-straight session, pre-market futures have sunk back into the red again this morning. The Nasdaq had reached gains in the past month of trading this week, but looks to be sinking lower in early trading today. The Dow is currently on track for its third down-week in a row. Oil prices moving back to triple-digits per barrel, due to strife in the Strait of Hormuz, are the obvious culprit.

The blue-chip Dow is another -403 points lower at this hour, -0.85%. The S&P 500 is -44, -0.65%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is -157 points, -0.63%. the small-cap Russell 2000 is presently trading lower by -34 points, -1.34%. Over the last month, the Dow has now dunk -5%, -2.7% year to date. Until today, the Russell 2000 had remained in the green year to date, but it looks to open in the red today.

Economic Reports This Morning: Jobless Claims, Starts/Permits & More

This being a “normal” Thursday morning, Weekly Jobless Claims have hit the tape an hour before the opening bell. Initial Jobless Claims have remained remarkably consistent over the past few weeks, reaching 213K claims once again for last week, down from a slightly upwardly revised 214K the prior week. The “low hire/low fire” dynamic appears to be firmly in place for another week.

Continuing Claims, reported a week in arrears from Initial Claims, were in-line with expectations at 1.850 million, down nicely from the previous week’s upwardly revised 1.871 million. We’re still in good shape on this metric, as well; we’d spent most of 2025 above 1.9 million longer-term jobless claims (while never hitting the psychologically significant 2 million).

January Housing Starts are out ahead of today’s open, too — and also better than expected. Headline 1.487 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units — thanks to strength in the multi-family unit starts that month — was much better than the 1.35 million anticipated, as well as the downwardly revised 1.39 million for December of last year. This is the highest Housing Starts tally since February of last year.

Building Permits lagged, however: 1.376 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units was lower than the 1.41 million projected and the upwardly revised 1.46 million from the prior month. This is the lowest number of monthly building permits since August of last year, and predicts, somewhat, future housing starts numbers.

The U.S. Trade Deficit was slimmer than expected for January, at -$54.5 billion, and the best number since the -$31.1 billion in October of last year. This follows a downwardly revised -$72.9 billion from December. But numbers so far in our rear view, not to mention tariff situations subject to change month by month (if not day by day), make this metric a tough one to glean much useful information from.

Biggest Earnings Day of the Week

Today is also the busiest day for earnings reports of the week. Ahead of the open, Dick’s Sporting Goods DKS beats earnings estimates by +20.5%, though shares are down on weaker forecasts. Dollar General also beat estimates by +20%, and is also down in today’s pre-market on lowered guidance.

After today’s close, Adobe ADBE is expected to bring in Q1 earnings up +15.75% from a year ago, +9.9% on the revenues side. Adobe is one of those rare companies to have beaten earnings estimates for the past five years. Ulta Beauty ULTA and Lennar Home LEN, also reporting this afternoon, are expected to bring negative earnings growth in their respective quarters.

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